10,000 years of feline domestication have led to this glorious moment

June 18, 2020 4:55 PM

The Quarantine Cat Film Festival (trailer, sample reel) opens on Friday, June 19th. For $12, you can watch a compilation of the "cutest, funniest, bravest, and most loving cat videos" and support your local independent cinema (or any participating cinema of your choice) in the process.

The film was directed by Brian Mendelssohn, founder of Pittsburgh's Row House Cinema, whose wife came up with the idea as a response to the devastating impact of COVID-19 on independent movie theaters. Over 1,300 videos were submitted to be part of this feline blockbuster, but only 130 made the final cut.

posted by tonycpsu (13 comments total)

I don't know about this film. I'm only a minute in, and already there have been four jump scares.
posted by dannyboybell at 6:22 PM on June 18, 2020

Yes. Why yes, I will do this. Why not? $12? Helping keep independent cinemas open? I've been buying Bandcamp downloads and CDs from music artists lately, too. Stuff I might not have bought normally but gotta keep these people and organizations afloat. I will do this, also.
posted by hippybear at 6:23 PM on June 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

I've missed this every year it's been at the actual cinema, so maybe I'll make this one!
posted by batter_my_heart at 10:32 PM on June 18, 2020

Oh yay, Row House. I contributed to their Indigogo campaign when they were starting out. They do (or did in beforetimes) some great programming and fill a gap left in here now that Pittsburgh Filmmakers imploded and shuttered their theaters.
posted by octothorpe at 7:52 AM on June 19, 2020

It's two pm Eastern. Has anyone gotten in yet?
Edited to add: Just noticed, it says going live at 3pm. Never mind.
posted by DanSachs at 10:59 AM on June 19, 2020

I can't tell by looking at the website -- is this a file you download or is it streaming only? Can I AirPlay it to my AppleTV and watch it on my big screen, or is it trapped on my (admittedly quite large) computer monitor?

I'll look more deeply into it later this evening, but thought someone here might know by now.
posted by hippybear at 5:33 PM on June 19, 2020

I just finished watching this and that’s a lot of cute kitties. I am a little disappointed that it did not finish up with text “The End” on screen overlaying a bunch of pics of cat asses. But other than that, fun! My favorite cat name: “Fluffalafagous”
posted by rmd1023 at 5:42 PM on June 19, 2020

Hippybear: I watched it in a browser. There was not obviously a way to download the file but I didn’t look very hard.
posted by rmd1023 at 5:44 PM on June 19, 2020

I was able to watch it via Chromecast on my Android phone, but it's kind of annoying that despite partnering with a big streaming platform (Vimeo) there aren't any native apps to play it on Roku, Fire, or AppleTV.

With that said, the content more than makes up for the shortcomings of the delivery platform.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:35 PM on June 19, 2020

You could surely simply screen-share it on your AppleTV and then it would be a bigger computer monitor watching it and if you went full screen?
posted by hippybear at 8:58 PM on June 19, 2020

I don't have an AppleTV -- I was just quoting from the page where they mention they don't have native apps. Chromecast seems liike the best option to play from Android to a TV, and it worked fine.
posted by tonycpsu at 6:34 AM on June 20, 2020

So I rented this today to watch. And it's a miserable experience. Their servers can't seem to deliver a steady stream to me. I mean, cats are great, but frozen with a spinning "loading" circle on them is less interesting.
posted by hippybear at 8:13 AM on July 12, 2020

Turns out you can degrade your stream rate (which didn't seem to degrade picture or sound quality at all for me) until you get a stable stream. It was fun to watch. If you can find a way to watch it smoothly, I also suggest you toss some money at independent cinemas and pay $12 for a couple of hours of cats.
posted by hippybear at 10:00 PM on July 16, 2020